And now a post with even LESS substance!

[trinityvixen]

ivy03 loaned me (ages and ages and ages and ages and ages ago) the second season of The Pretender on DVD. I used to watch this show with my parents on Saturday nights over dinner or just before/after. I seemed to remember liking it and borrowed it to complete the "mythology" of the show.

I'm thoroughly convinced that they were less plotted out than the worse seasons of Battlestar Galactica, LOST, and The X-FIles combined. This is the still the "oooh, look, we have plooooot" stage of shooting television. It's still an essentially episodic show with the ongoing "plot" hanging on the ends. The episodic stuff is ridiculously bad--the new version of The Outer Limits bad, Tales From The Crypt-but-taking-itself-seriously bad, bad-guys-always-confessing-on-CSI bad.

The frame story, though, is really fun. The shadowy Center group trying to reclaim their lost prize project, said prize project fucking around and making them crazy, politics at the Center changing the game a little. Mostly, I love Ms. Parker. She's a stone-cold bitch, and I love her. They keep trying to humanize her with the murder of her mother, her dependence on Daddy, that sort of thing, but where she really shines is in being a cold-hearted psycho cunt. I mean that in a good way, I actually do.

Some kids thump into her while tearing wild. Ms. Parker: "Where's Planned Parenthood when you need them?" Yes, she made a birth control/abortion joke. I LOVE HER. A bunch of the Center people are being grilled about who shot the head dude; everyone vacillates, but Ms. Parker goes, "Oh yeah, I would have shot him, sure. But I wouldn't have missed." Naturally, she is so intimidating, just about everyone believes her.

Psycho cunts for the win!!!

Comments

[jendaby.livejournal.com]

We were big fans of that show - mostly because the characters were so fun! They get more into the main plot eventually. At the time, though, it was one of the best shows on the air. And everything at that time had a certain cheesiness. If memory serves, we were watching that the same season as Strange Luck, Nowhere Man, and American Gothic. That would mean we were also watching X-files. Wow. I really miss our old apartment and entertainment center now... and the snazzy cable package we had. LOL. Ah, nostalgia!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

At the time, I think we had The Pretender, The Profiler, Hercules, and Xena. Whatever was on on Saturday night tended to be what we saw regularly. This is before I made it a habit to watch TV. I sorta miss that freedom, but I won't miss my shows now!

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

This show comes from my high school years, i.e., those years where I did not have regular access to a tv. I'd catch it occasionally as it aired (on Friday night, I think, when I wasn't hanging around the dorm), but I mostly caught up with it in college when someone on the network had them all on the server.

Also, there's is lots of hot in this show. Yum.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's The Centre.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Is it really? Clearly, I've not paid enough attention. I tend to just doodle around on the computer or with stitching while it's on and then pay attention when Ms. Parker is on :)

Also, they're going to do this "Oh, look at what quaint little custom/practice Jarod isn't familiar with" every episode, aren't they? I mean, I could understand when it was sex, but it's getting a tad retarded. (Actually, anyone growing to adulthood with ZERO concept of sexual desire is a stupid idea, too.) Yes, I buy him not knowing about Halloween, but he hardly seems a genius in his amused reactions. More, a slightly dim, humorless uncle or something.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Yes, they are. It's one of the most formulaic shows I've ever seen. Probably tied with Highlander.

Jarod is a bizarre character. He's a weird genius man-child who dresses in black leather and yet single women and small children are not afraid when he approaches them. I love Jarod, but he's one of those characters that I just sort of accept is nutso. Like Bruce Wayne. (Also, like Bruce Wayne, he is hot. Have you seen the eyeliner episode yet?)

I haven't read much of the fic, but it's not surprising almost all of it is about Miss Parker. Not just because of the character's appeal, I think, but because it's really fucking hard to write Jarod.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I don't know what it is that bugs me about the idea of Jarod's technically smart, culturally ignorant fable, but it does. It grates. Perhaps I'm just bitter about the episode where he had to spend "learning" about Spider-Man. That was annoying because a) Spider-Man is soubiquitous that it's almost impossible even a shut-in would escape knowing about him; b) the in-show discussion of him made it clear that the "fan" of it (who was the villain--fabulous) was not even a very good disguise of the fact the writers don't read the comics; and c) Jarod was a better fan than most people are today. (For starters, he actually went and read all of the comics--we're supposed to infer he did.)

I find Jarod okay-looking generally, but there was that one episode where he had on wire-frame glasses and a suit with a vest. Yeah, I'd hit that. Otherwise, he's moderately attractive but his voice does nothing for me. (It sounds weird in some way, almost pubertal in the way it goes from light to heavy as he talks.) I did have the same reaction--why do people always trust Jarod!?--but I got really creeped out by it in the episode where he pays some woman to let him stalk her to see what that's like. Okaaaaaayyy...

It would be funny if most Pretender-fic were about Miss Parker. It would be one of the few fandoms that weren't predominantly female where the female character was the more popular one (to write about). I think you're right: it's too hard to strike the right balance of genius/idiot with Jarod to write him. (Though, if memory serves, I really liked your piece way back when.)

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I tend to view Jarod as thiiiis close to psychopathic. Because, really, some of his little revenge fantasies are deeply sadistic. I don't seem him as a remotely stable person, and I think he's only moral by pure accident.

I think The Pretender is another case of the creators thinking they're writing one type of character but actually writing another. Jarod is, let's face it, wish fulfilment. He does everything better than everyone else, he's brilliant, he always wins in the end, he gets to not only play with all the cool toys (how many stuntman/race car driver episodes do we need? Not to mention the several gigolo episodes), but he also gets to exact the kind of deeply satisfying revenge on people that is completely unacceptable socially. But by giving him all of that, and the freedom to act on his impulses without inhibitions, they've made him a really deeply frightening person. I mean, you better hope he likes you, cause if he doesn't, jesus fuck you're screwed.

Not to mention the way he toys with Miss Parker. This is mostly a consequence of the way the show was written, making things up as they go along, stringing things out, but Jarod is really this evil puppet master who doesn't allow Miss Parker or Sydney to leave the Centre and get on with their lives.

The one type of episode I don't think they ever did, which I, of course, would have loved, is one where Jarod is completely wrong. Where he psychologically tortures an innocent person into a confession and only realizes later. Because the only thing that makes him heroic is that he's so smart he's never wrong.

We will have to talk more about Miss Parker later...

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I tend to view Jarod as thiiiis close to psychopathic. Because, really, some of his little revenge fantasies are deeply sadistic.

They are very sadistic. Almost every single one features him putting someone into a situation where they think they're going to die, usually horribly. Rewrite Jarod as a bad guy, and this is the plot of the Saw movies (essentially, death traps as teaching tools). The one where he buried the guy a little so that he could think he was being buried alive? S.I.C.K.

Yes, Jarod is a wish-fulfiller--he's just MacGuyver with more set-up time and supplies. For that reason, they could never do the episode you propose because it would be like writing a Batman comic (post the first run in the 1930s) where he killed a criminal. With a gun. Part of the wish-fulfillment impulse is the idea that near-fascist, anti-social or downright psychotic behavior can be pulled back. Jarod is wicked determined to make someone suffer but only until they confess and then the law takes over. (Ditto Batman.) While we like this very much in fiction, most of us have a healthy enough understanding of humanity that we know there is no way anyone would manage not to go completely nuts from this sort of behavior. (There are no benevolent dictators.) Showing Jarod's methods to be questionable instead of successful would raise the spectre of reality, and that would be out of place in such a fantastical realm as Jarod inhabits.

Yes, more about Ms. Parker. I love her!

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

As jendaby said, we really enjoyed The Pretender when it was on. Yes, it was incredibly formulaic--esp. in first season, where you could literally say "Oh look, that's the person he helped who will then have incredibly useful information/skills/equipment for him to use at the end"--but still great fun. And the characters were awesome. And yes, I think both of us had a crush on Ms. Parker. Yowza!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I have to believe that TV has gotten better as time marched on. Not to say that it's gotten less ridiculous (hello, Prison Break), just that there's at least some effort to subvert our assumptions. Some times, anyway. Every episode of The Pretender you can see coming a mile off. Even Law and Order has more surprises.

Ms. Parker. She even have a first name? Or would you dare not use it for fear of an ass-kicking? I mean, they even call her Ms. when the evil Centre bad-guy is just referred to by his last name. That's bad-ass. She also wears this consciously dark shade of lipstick which somehow really, really works for her. It's not red, it's just a dark pink-purple so that it's clearly lipstick but I can't possibly imagine her with normal-colored lips and that's what color I think hers are.

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

There was some movie role we desperately wanted to see her in--I think it was as Emma Peel in the Avengers. Can you imagine her as Emma Peel? She would have been awesome!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

She would have been better than Uma Thurman, that's for sure.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Well, since the character was basically meant to be Emma Peel...

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Really? Keen. Is that why she's constantly Ms. Parker (like Mrs. Peel)?

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

No, but that's why she's dressed like Emma Peel. With the hair and everything. She's very retro.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I thought it was just 'cause she had style. :)

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

The producers of the show used to have a website up, back before the horror show that was "Island of the Haunted." It's down now, but I actually *hem* downloaded a copy of it.

Anyway…

On it they said they deliberately gave every character only one name. Jarod, Sydney, Broots, Raines, Miss Parker. It's meant to be some kind of post-modern representation of the fragmentation of the character's identities or some such, so no, Miss Parker does not have a first name.

It was actually an argument over this point that led me to leaving the Pretender yahoo group, but that's another story…

Also, you do realize this is by the same people who brought you Tin Man, right?

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

On it they said they deliberately gave every character only one name. Jarod, Sydney, Broots, Raines, Miss Parker. It's meant to be some kind of post-modern representation of the fragmentation of the character's identities or some such, so no, Miss Parker does not have a first name.

I think it also lends importance to relationships. Notably, Ms. Parker's referencing of her parents solely by "my mother" or "Daddy." (Which, in their different levels of formality, are a psychological minefield of their own.) Jarod's relationship to Sydney is strengthened and made both artificially and genuinely loving by the idea that they are on a one-name basis. Conversely, a name like Broots, which is clearly a family name, can convey distance and subordination (he's Broots, she's Ms. Parker; if someone wanted to turn that around, they could really insult Ms. Parker by just calling her "Parker"). I don't know jack about "postmodernism" but I do see the dramatic effectiveness of the results of the one-name system (combined with the restricted use of signatory epithets).

Also, you do realize this is by the same people who brought you Tin Man, right?

Suddenly, the lack of cohesion makes so much more sense! No, really? Faaabulous. So the good parts on top of the nonsensical is a theme of theirs, is it?